Jonathan Brown

Opinion… Syria: what do we do now? And as importantly, why? (Part 1)

By Jonathan Brown | Wed 28th August 2013 - 12:18 pm

There are no good options open to us. Our choices as a country are to jump from the top floor of the burning building where we currently stand or to turn and face the flames we’ve been fanning. I want us to take that leap – to make the effort to understand what outcome might be desirable and possible, and to work towards achieving it. While we’ve dithered, others have been working towards goals that should concern us: we have a stake in the outcome of this war.

This is the first of three articles, inspired not just by the chemical weapon …

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Posted in Europe / International and Op-eds | Tagged | 12 Comments
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Ted Burke

The Independent View: Lost hours playing Snake – and reining in the banks on food pricing

By Ted Burke | Wed 28th August 2013 - 11:18 am

About a decade ago I was addicted to the classic Nokia game, Snake. If I had a spare few minutes I’d be guiding my pixelated reptile around the black and white screen of my mobile phone, trying to beat my high score. It was simple, hopelessly addictive and I couldn’t put it down.

As I happily helped the Snake on my screen eat itself full, like most people I was blissfully unaware that something was seriously unfair with global food pricing. The rules governing how much food costs – and banks taking advantage of them – was, and still is, locking …

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Posted in Europe / International, Op-eds and The Independent View | Tagged , and | 3 Comments
Caron Lindsay

Syria: what do Liberal Democrats want?

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 28th August 2013 - 9:57 am

Last night we brought you Nick Clegg’s view on Syria, which can be summarised as follows:

  • if we stand idly by we set a very dangerous precedent
  • the use of chemical weapons is a repugnant crime
  • we will not stand idly by when chemical weapons are used in complete breach of international law
  •  Government “is not going to act outside the remit of international law”
  • we want to stand up for the standards and norms in the civilised world

In the last couple of days Paddy Ashdown and Sir Menzies Campbell, two of the most respected voices this country has on foreign affairs, have been …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , , and | 46 Comments

The Independent View: Time to bring industry into the classroom

By James Kempton and Sam Tomlin | Wed 28th August 2013 - 9:00 am
 Too many young people leave education without the skills and understanding of industry that businesses need. The big increase in apprenticeships in recent years means that a lot more people are now experiencing vocational learning on the job.
But there is still a problem in further education colleges, where most vocational learners still get all or the majority their training. Currently only around 11% of teaching staff at these colleges also work in their chosen profession. In certain sectors such as STEM, where industry standards and practice move fast, knowledge can quickly become out of date. This leads to a gap

…

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Posted in Op-eds and The Independent View | Tagged , and | 2 Comments
The Voice

Nick Clegg on Syria: Government “is not going to act outside the remit of international law”

By The Voice | Tue 27th August 2013 - 7:15 pm

Here’s Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg commenting on the Government’s actions on Syria:

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Posted in Europe / International and YouTube | Tagged and | 28 Comments
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Caron Lindsay

Top of the Blogs: The Lib Dem Golden Dozen #340

By Caron Lindsay | Tue 27th August 2013 - 7:00 pm

Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 340th weekly round-up from the Lib Dem blogosphere … Featuring the seven most popular stories beyond Lib Dem Voice according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (18-24 August, 2013), together with a hand-picked quintet, normally courtesy of LibDig, you might otherwise have missed.

Don’t forget: you can sign up to receive the Golden Dozen direct to your email inbox — just click here — ensuring you never miss out on the best of Lib Dem blogging.

As ever, let’s start with the most popular post, and work our way down:

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Andrew Emmerson

Book review: Liberal Democrats do God

By Andrew Emmerson | Tue 27th August 2013 - 5:02 pm

liberaldemocratsdogodMainstream Christianity often does battle with mainstream liberal values, be that over women in the church, LGBT rights or contraception and abortion. So when I learned that there was a Liberal Democrat Christian Forum and they’d embarked on a new publication entitled “Liberal Democrats do God” my interest was piqued.

At £6.67 on Amazon, I was somewhat surprised when it arrived at its rather lightweight look and feel. At just 70-80 pages, this is no War and Peace.

My first impression of the book upon opening was the number of high profile writers from Tim Farron, Duncan Hames, to Baroness Brinton and Sir Alan Beith … an  undoubted breadth and range of Lib Dem opinion and experience.

The books is split into two sections, the first “Why should we do God?”  covers essays by John Pugh MP, Tm Farron MP, Greg Mulholland MP and Sir Andrew Stunnell MP. All seek to explain why they hold their respective faiths and how they interlink with liberalism.

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Posted in Books | Tagged , and | 45 Comments
George Cunningham

Opinion: A more realistic approach to Defence policy

By George Cunningham | Tue 27th August 2013 - 3:33 pm

defenceThe Liberal Democrat Working Group on Defence came out last month with its policy paper “Defending the Future: UK Defence in the 21st Century”. Brussels and Europe Liberal Democrats made a detailed submission – praised by members of the working group – which also shows some alternative paths for the party’s defence policy. We suggest it is well worth a read before the party’s new defence policy motion comes up for debate at this Autumn’s party conference.

The Brussels and Europe Liberal Democrats’ paper calls for a more thought-through, long-term and realistic strategic approach by the Government, including defining more precisely Britain’s role in the world, a reform of security and defence-related institutions, the constant update of the threat assessment, the creation of out-of-area alliances to share military burden, ways for less expensive procurement, the capacity to regenerate of military forces quickly in time of war – and much more.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged and | 8 Comments
George Potter

Opinion: Why aren’t we borrowing more?

By George Potter | Tue 27th August 2013 - 1:39 pm

At the moment the yield on the UK’s five year government gilts is 1.65%. What this means in plain English is that if our government wanted to borrow £1,000 it would have to pay back £1,083 in five years.

In contrast, if you or I or a business went to the bank and ask to borrow the same amount for five years we’d be looking at paying back well over £1,500 by the end of the loan.

What this tells us is that our government can borrow money very, very cheaply. It can borrow it at less than the rate of …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged and | 22 Comments
Sue Doughty

Party Reform: The Interim Peers List, is it fit for purpose?

By Sue Doughty | Tue 27th August 2013 - 11:52 am

House of Lords. Photo: Parliamentary copyright images are reproduced with the permission of ParliamentTim Farron, our Party President has long championed concerns about how democratic  the Lib Dems really are and how can we do better.  Federal Executive has now set up the Democratic Reform Group which I chair.  Our first task has been to take a hard look at the Interim Peers List and we have published a consultation paper on this together with organising a meeting at Glasgow to consult members about improvements to the process.  The Interim Peers list is an group of people elected by Conference Representatives from which the Party Leader can make nominations to the House of Lords.

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Posted in News | Tagged , , and | 14 Comments
Stephen Tindale

The Independent View: Liberal Democrats should support nuclear power

By Stephen Tindale | Tue 27th August 2013 - 10:03 am

nuclear-power-station

Liberal Democrats should vote to support nuclear power at the 2013 conference. I say this after 20 years campaigning against nuclear power, including five years as head of Greenpeace UK. Nuclear is not perfect. But it is better than fossil fuels.

The best form of energy is energy efficiency. Next best are renewables. But however efficient we get, and however fast we expand wind, it will take many decades before we can be entirely reliant on renewables. Denmark has set itself a target of 2050 for this. The EU has a target of 20% by 2020. If the 2020 target is met, that still leaves 80% of the journey to travel. So other low-carbon technologies are needed to protect the climate.

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Posted in The Independent View | Tagged , and | 11 Comments
David Gray

Opinion: We need urgent debate about Syria, not just rhetoric

By David Gray | Tue 27th August 2013 - 8:55 am

If recent news reports are to be believed, we are now edging closer and closer some form of military conflict with Syria. It is a fast moving situation; indeed, one that could escalate drastically within a matter of days. But with MPs on their summer holidays, there has been a worrying lack of proper debate about the issue.

A few months ago, an 87-year-old woman died and Parliament was recalled so that people could talk about it, at no small expense to the taxpayer. I have no wish to go through that particular debate again, but it is difficult to …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged | 68 Comments
NewsHound

‘I have a dream’ speech on Radio 4

By NewsHound | Mon 26th August 2013 - 12:43 pm

martin-luther-king-jrThis Wednesday the BBC will be marking the 50th Anniversary of  the March on Washington and Martin Luther King’s  ‘I have a dream’ speech’ with a special programme at 9am on Radio 4.

The entire speech will be read by 19 well-known human rights activists, including Maya Angelou, Doreen Lawrence, Mary Robinson, Malala Yousafzai and the Dalai Lama. You can see the full list of readers here.

The programme will be repeated at 2.30pm on BBC World Service, or you can, of course, catch up on i-Player.

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Posted in News | Tagged and | 7 Comments
Stephen Tall

How you can take part in LibDemVoice’s exclusive party member surveys

By Stephen Tall | Mon 26th August 2013 - 9:00 am

LibDemVoice’s surveys of party members signed-up to our discussion forum have been running for close to four years now. (I posted yesterday the final set of figures from our most recent poll.)

Our surveys are a way of testing members’ views on a variety of hot topics. And as they’ve been running throughout the first three years of the Coalition they’re also an interesting record of changing views on how the Coalition is regarded within the party.

If you would like to take part in the LibDemVoice surveys, there are simply two steps you need to follow:
1) Be a current …

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Posted in LDV Members poll | 2 Comments
The Voice

LDV’s Sunday Best: our 7 most-read articles this week

By The Voice | Sun 25th August 2013 - 2:20 pm

Many thanks to the 11,500 visitors who dropped by Lib Dem Voice this week. Here’s our 7 most-read posts…

…

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Posted in Site news | 1 Comment
Caron Lindsay

The lessons we must learn for Nick Clegg’s next holiday

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 25th August 2013 - 11:24 am

Nick Clegg’s two spells of holiday this Summer have been characterised by the Home Office in particular getting above itself in his absence. Both the party and Nick’s Special Advisers should have learned from the furore over the “Go home” poster vans. The Home Office pulled a fast one by implementing this pilot without telling the Liberal Democrats. The response from the Party was the right one – that they were “disproportionate, distasteful and ineffective” and Vince Cable saying a few days later that they were stupid and offensive. The problem was that the response came out by …

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Posted in News | Tagged , , , , and | 31 Comments

The Observer claims Lib Dems officially ‘blast fracking’ – no!

By Andy Boddington | Sun 25th August 2013 - 10:01 am

Balcombe FrackingToday’s Observer splashes with “Liberal Democrats blast environmental damage caused by fracking.” Not quite.

We’ve had quite a lively debate here on Lib Dem Voice on the merits and demerits of fracking (Gilbert, Boddington).  In the Observer article Tony Helm suggests that Liberal Democrats have rejected shale gas extraction. As I said not quite.

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Posted in News | Tagged , and | 22 Comments
The Voice

Jo Swinson to name and shame rogue employers who fail to pay minimum wage

By The Voice | Sat 24th August 2013 - 3:47 pm

Jo Swinson was featured widely in the media yesterday talking about her plan to tackle employers who fail to pay the National Minimum Wage.

The BIS website outlines the plan:

Employment Relations Minister Jo Swinson said:

Paying less than the minimum wage is illegal. If employers break this law they need to know that we will take tough action.

This is why I’m making changes so it is easier to name and shame employers who break the law. This gives a clear warning to rogue employers who ignore the rules, that they will face reputational consequences as well as a fine if they

…

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Posted in News | Tagged , and | 20 Comments
The Voice

Lessons of Coalition (18): We need to show more loyalty to the voters

By The Voice | Sat 24th August 2013 - 2:15 pm

ldv coalition lessonsLibDemVoice is running a daily feature, ‘Lessons of Coalition’, to assess the major do’s and don’ts learned from our experience of the first 3 years in government. Reader contributions are welcome, either as comments or posts. The word limit is no more than 450 words, and please focus on just one lesson you think the party needs to learn. Simply email your submission to [email protected]. Today Alan Craw shares his thoughts.

Coalition government was never going to be easy, and so it proved, but the one general lesson we as …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged and | 36 Comments
NewsHound

Liblink: Nick Clegg “I share the concerns about David Miranda’s detention”

By NewsHound | Sat 24th August 2013 - 11:57 am

You can’t accuse Nick Clegg of hiding away. Now that he’s returned from holiday, his first direct public comment on the Miranda detention and Guardian files controversy comes in a column in that paper.

First, where the Liberal Democrats are coming from:

Liberal Democrats believe government must tread the fine line between liberty and security very carefully, and are not easily persuaded by a government minister asserting: “Just trust me.” So now that we are in government, we have been vigilant in ensuring the right decisions are made: scrutinising and challenging the assumptions of security experts, even as we give them our

…

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Posted in LibLink | Tagged , , and | 8 Comments
John Cole

Opinion: What moves me to go to Glasgow? Challenging Osborne’s Plan A

By John Cole | Sat 24th August 2013 - 10:30 am

I used to teach economics and in my retirement I have had the opportunity to follow closely the macro events of the last five years. The overwhelming weight of evidence is that the Osborne Plan A (expansionary fiscal consolidation) has been a disaster. Any objective analysis leads to this compelling conclusion – and Liberal Democrats should give up being “uberloyal” to the leadership and act in a dispassionate and evidence-informed manner.

You don’t have to take just my word for it. I can highly recommend Paul Krugman’s book End This Depression Now! and Mark Blyth’s recent publication Austerity – …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged | 21 Comments
Tom Brake

Tom Brake on 38 Degrees and the Transparency and Lobbying Bill

By Tom Brake | Sat 24th August 2013 - 9:03 am

Tom Brake MPI’m sure some Liberal Democrat members and readers of Liberal Democrat Voice will have recently received a rather alarmist email from 38 Degrees claiming that the Government, through the Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill, is attempting to stop charities and campaign groups criticising government policy.

I would like to reassure Liberal Democrat Voice readers that 38 Degrees have rather regrettably misrepresented and exaggerated the effect and intent of the bill. We are doing nothing of the sort.

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Posted in News and Parliament | Tagged and | 84 Comments

Opinion: Government is at its best when it’s boring

By Andy Boddington | Fri 23rd August 2013 - 3:03 pm

If Alistair Darling had ever walked into the pub when I was pulling pints, I would have thrown him out on his ear for introducing the now deceased beer escalator.

Now I find myself applauding him. What he said today about High Speed 2 and transport policy was probably bad politics, but it is exceedingly good government.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged and | 25 Comments
Camilla Berens

Independent View: Conference – Time to kick the nuclear energy habit

By Camilla Berens | Fri 23rd August 2013 - 2:04 pm

Nuclear no thanksThe movement against nuclear energy waits anxiously. Given Ed Davey’s apparent enthusiasm for new nuclear, it is more than a little alarming to learn that a proposal to support nuclear new build has been put forward as part of the Green Growth and Green Jobs debate at Glasgow. Are Lib Dem’s really willing to abandon one of the party’s unique selling points?

The proposal (Option B 4.3.3) asserts that nuclear power could play a limited role in achieving a zero carbon Britain – provided that concerns about safety, disposal of radioactive waste and cost, including decommissioning, can be adequately addressed. If we could turn the optimism behind this motion into energy, we’d be able to keep the lights on forever.

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Posted in The Independent View | Tagged and | 33 Comments

Opinion: Lessons from the failure of centre-liberal politics in Australia

By A Liberal Reform Board Member | Fri 23rd August 2013 - 1:03 pm

Australian DemocratsIn an island not so far away, in a time not so long ago, a socially liberal centrist party met its end under circumstances eerily similar to those the Liberal Democrats now find themselves in. The sudden demise of the Australian Democrats is a tale from the antipodes that holds several lessons for the Lib Dems.

The Australian Democrats were the 3rd force in Australian politics between 1977 and 2008, frequently holding the balance of power in Australia’s elected upper house and achieving election at the state and local council level. They played a lead role in many of the civil liberties, environmental protection and democratic reform battles in Australia during that time. At their height in the late 1990s, the Democrats were vital for the conservative government of John Howard to pass its legislation in the upper house.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged and | 25 Comments

BBC bias? Yes, but not to the left researchers say

By Andy Boddington | Fri 23rd August 2013 - 12:03 pm

BBC not left biasedWriting at The Conversation, Cardiff University lecturer Mike Berry looks at whether the BBC is biased.

He concludes, despite the regular screams of left wing bias by the right wing press, that Tories get more airtime than Labour.

The BBC is not pro-EU, quite the reverse. But reportage “saw Europe almost exclusively through the prism of political infighting between Labour and the Conservatives so a rounded debate… was almost completely absent.” Voices arguing for the benefits of EU membership were, says Berry, very sparse.

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Posted in News | Tagged and | 15 Comments
Caron Lindsay

Last chance to respond to Scottish Equal Marriage consultation

By Caron Lindsay | Fri 23rd August 2013 - 11:33 am

At almost the 11th hour, I have submitted my views to the Scottish Parliament’s Equalities Committee which will be considering Scotland’s Marriage and Civil Partnership Bill.

The deadline is today, so you really need to get on with it. The “other side” will make sure that they get their point of view across so it’s really important that the Committee hears from those in support.

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Nick Tyrone

Opinion: A Penny For Your Vote? – the costs of winning votes

By Nick Tyrone | Fri 23rd August 2013 - 11:03 am

Votes for cashThe Electoral Reform Society has released a paper entitled A Penny For Your Vote?, which explores the connection between politics and money. It will come as no surprise to most Liberal Democrats that the equation between cash and seats is out of kilter. But the hard numbers contained within the paper may still come as a shock.

The amount of money spent winning a single vote ranges from £3.07 down to 14 pence dependent on where in the country you live. The disparity between these two figures equates to the small number being 22 times paltrier than the large one. This is because, as most of you will have surmised already, the amount of cash that parties pour into a seat at a general election is mostly down to how marginal it is thought to be.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged | 1 Comment
George Potter

Opinion: Chelsea Manning is a woman. Get over it.

By George Potter | Fri 23rd August 2013 - 10:04 am

This week the leaker of the US diplomatic cables to Wikileaks, US Army private Bradley Manning formally announced that she will be living the rest of her life as a woman, hopes to have hormone therapy and would like to be referred to from now on with female pronouns.

Predictably, this triggered an onslaught of media attention referring to Chelsea Manning as “Bradley” and as “he”. This in turn triggered an equally predictable deluge of transphobic opinion and comment pieces across print, broadcast and online media.

Some of these pieces are of the “a dog isn’t a cat even if you …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged | 27 Comments
Gerald Vernon-Jackson

Opinion: Does the central and local government relationship need rewiring?

By Gerald Vernon-Jackson | Fri 23rd August 2013 - 9:03 am

Wired Government smallerThe relationship between central and local government in the UK has always been strained. The UK is one of the most centralised democracies in Europe, and as we have no written constitution local government has no automatic right to exist or do anything. Everything is dependent on the decisions of ministers.

The new Government in 2010 did good things in reversing some of the things the last right-wing, authoritarian and centralising government had done. The huge inspection and reporting regime was abolished. Ring fencing of budgets was mainly done away with. The Localism Act was brought in that gave local government the power of local competence.

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Posted in Local government, News and Op-eds | Tagged and | 6 Comments
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